Mountain Wanderer Map and Bookstore

About Me

Owner of Mountain Wanderer Map and Book Store and avid hiker for 40 years. Editor of AMC White Mountain Guide and author or co-author of several other White Mountain guidebooks. Member of AMC Four Thousand Footer Committee and WMNF trail adopter.

Sunday, June 14, 2015

THREE PONDS AREA: 6/12/15

The wild, wetland-rich basin between Carr Mountain and Mount Kineo in the southwestern Whites has long been one of my favorite backcountry haunts. It is best known for the scenic Three Ponds: Lower, Middle and Upper. I hadn't been in here in a couple of years, partly due to ongoing snowmobile trail construction, so it was time for a return visit to the ponds, and to see what trail changes had been wrought. The trailhead for the wonderful 5+ mile loop around the Three Ponds Trail, Donkey Hill Cutoff and Mount Kineo Trail is on Stinson Lake Road, a long way in from the major highways.

I was disappointed to see that the Mount Kineo Trail, which through here was a wild, lightly-used footpath, had been bulldozed into a snowmobile superhighway. I'm all for snowmobiling, but the reshaping of hiking trails in this area has been pretty heavy-handed.

A northern spur of Carr Mountain seen across the Brown Brook Marshes.

A beautiful maple glade at an old logging camp site.

Logging camp artifact. This was in the same spot back in 2010.

After checking out two more snowmobile trail junctions, I bushwhacked up to a low spur of Mount Kineo in search of a viewpoint over the Brown Brook Marshes I'd found in 2009. I was a little rushed and couldn't find the spot, but did gain a partial view. This wetland complex is more than a mile long.

This is the more open vista of the marshes that I discovered in 2009.

The high crest of Carr Mountain (3453 ft.).

A profile of Carr's long ridge.

Back down along the Mount Kineo combined snowmobile/hiking trail, a look down into a gorgeous bottomland maple forest.

I followed a now-abandoned 0.3 mile section of the Mount Kineo Trail along the marshes rather than the wide, up-and-down 0.4 mile snowmobile section that is replacing it.

The scenic highlight as you complete the usual loop on the Mount Kineo Trail is this cascade on Brown Brook. There is much to see in the Three Ponds area.